NHL: Simmonds believes Washington fight marked turning point

A linesman directs Flyers goalie Ray Emery, left, back toward the bench as Washington’s Steve Olesky and Flyers’ Vincent Lecavalier, right, battle during the Capitals’ 7-0 win at the Wells Fargo Center last November. The Flyers look back at that embarrassing loss as the beginning of their turnaround. (AP Photo)

VOORHEES, N.J. — The Flyers lost their first three games. Then they lost head coach Peter Laviolette.

Almost magically, they responded to Craig Berube’s first game as an NHL head coach by beating the Florida Panthers. OK, maybe it wasn’t so magical.

By Nov. 1 they were still sliding right along. And then they went out that day to face a Washington Capitals team without Alex Ovechkin at Wells Fargo Center. No matter how promising that sounded, the Flyers promptly were crushed by the Caps 7-0. Ray Emery, who came on in relief of an unprotected Steve Mason, decided to finish his game in style, by first calling out, then pounding the pads off opposing goalie Braden Holtby amid other wrestling matches.

Rite of passage, you know, no matter how wrong it looked.

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But so many months and games later, Wayne Simmonds was sitting by his locker stall Saturday, looking back on the Capital beating his team had received that day and the physical way in which Emery reacted.

“I honestly think the turning point of our season was that Washington game,” Simmonds said. “That was embarrassing. We probably didn’t have any more than 16 or 17 shots that game and we got in that little scrap at the end. Razor comes out and he has a good fight there, we start a little bit of a brawl but it was clearly out of frustration.

“But we had a meeting right after that,” Simmonds added. “I’m pretty sure Kimmo (Timonen) and (Claude Giroux) were in charge there and they just talked to us about things we had to do the right way; how we might have been working hard but we were weren’t working smart enough. And I think that’s when it all turned around.”

The Flyers limped out of that touchdown-sized loss to the Capitals with a 3-9 record, but with a message from the meeting firmly entrenched. The next day, they traveled up the turnpike and deposited a 1-0 loss on the Devils, and in a fairly steady way carried on up an improving path from there. Starting with that Devils win on All Saints Day, the Flyers have gone 36-18-7 through a 4-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs Friday night.

And though they seem to be locked into a safe, third-place playoff position in the Metropolitan Division, there are still no guarantees. For despite all their success through the winter and early spring, they have guaranteed nothing for the postseason, and of their remaining nine games there are some very tall challenges still ahead.

For starters, there is a game Sunday against the Boston Bruins, who in beating the Capitals Saturday improved to 51-17-6 (108 points) and clinched the Atlantic Division title.

The Bruins don’t seem very interested in slowing the ride down anytime soon.

“It’s going to be a war,” Scott Hartnell predicted. “I think it’s a team that’s been unbelievable for about a month, probably. We’ve had some really good stretches as well and we’re fighting for a playoff spot. We’re going to want to get those two points. We’re going to come out hard and we’re going to come out strong and play smart.”

Essentially, then, the Flyers would be following Berube’s daily game plan if they are to do that. Good luck.

The Capitals beat the Bruins on March 1 in Boston, 4-2. Since then, the Bruins have gone on a Mission in March, blitzing the competition to the tune of 14-0-1, including a pair of wins over the Capitals that have crippled their playoff hopes.

Meanwhile, Boston has taken on the look of the team to beat for a championship. And the Flyers get these guys twice in the last nine games.

“They’re definitely on a roll,” Berube said. “They’re a very good team. They don’t have a lot of weaknesses, I’ll tell you that.”

The Flyers do have the advantage of a day of rest going for them, which served them well in beating the Maple Leafs after suffering the loss Wednesday to New York. As for the Bruins, they’ll be playing their second game in two days.

At least that’s cause for keeping the fingers collectively crossed. Of course, for further confidence inflation, the Flyers can look at all they’ve accomplished since that long-ago 7-0 loss to the Capitals which left everybody fighting mad.

“We had a ton of doubts coming off the lockout-shortened season,” Simmonds said. “We weren’t playing too well all through that half a year, and then to go 0-3 and then 1-7 at the start this year, I don’t think we had too much confidence in here. And then all of a sudden we had one good game and then two good games and then the ball starts getting bigger and bigger and we started to go downhill instead of trying to fight our way uphill.”

The roll ensued. The promise of the future looms ... right around that Bruins roadblock, that is.